


Inhuman

by honestgrins



Series: Round and Round [6]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, klaroline infinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 03:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10208921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestgrins/pseuds/honestgrins
Summary: Day 6 - Other Supernatural: Klaus is almost ready to break his curse, but he refuses to do so without Katerina finally doing her part. She has managed to elude him so far with the help of various allies, but the latest distraction proves to be far more interesting to Klaus.





	

"Funny," Klaus noted with a smirk. "Katerina usually prefers to employ male cannon fodder."

The little blonde merely stood before him, unafraid. She didn't even bother to reply. Her head canted to the side as she watched the Original draw closer to the door of his hotel room, where she had been waiting.

It was something of a game for Klaus in his hunt to break the curse restraining his wolf, to allow Katerina Petrova's various pets enough of a fight to be fun for him. The werewolf from whom she had stolen the moonstone lacked the strategy of battle; the vampire brothers she bounced between were too busy competing for her favor to put up a decent showing. Even Elijah was easily a pawn to the wily doppelganger, though at least daggering him was an actual challenge.

This girl, however, smelled young. Klaus couldn't sense any power, as he could on a vampire, wolf, or witch. Humans were often too stupid to realize the danger he posed, but they could still feel a frisson of unease in his sheer presence. She seemed almost serene.

But he had gone to great trouble in collecting the necessary ingredients to break his curse. Not using Katerina as his vampire sacrifice would be such a waste. He had followed her trail to a small college campus where blood and sex were easy to come by - her favorite habitat. Unable to draw her out from hiding, Klaus left hints of his arrival through well placed rumors and the occasional murder of a curly-haired brunette.

Katerina sent a message of her own: bleeding sorority girls appearing twice a day at his hotel room door, none of whom held any recollection of the bitch. Compulsion was a favorite of hers, he supposed. Well fed, he had no problem playing the long game as long as she stayed in town.

Then he found her witch.

"Did you know the Bennett girl?" Klaus asked teasingly, daring to brush the blonde curls from the strange woman's face. "I figured the grandmother was the draw for Katerina, all that knowledge and disdain for us Originals, but the girl… Oh, she had power." He gave a wicked smirk at the twitch in her otherwise impassive expression. "To die so young."

"At least it was quick," she replied hoarsely. "I won't thank you for snapping her neck, but I can be grateful she didn't suffer."

It was a small mercy, one of expedience rather than any real remorse. Klaus needed Katerina to retaliate, giving her an opportunity to make the mistake he needed to finally capture her.

The blonde waiting for him in front of his door as he returned from killing the Bennetts had been an odd form of retaliation, but he wasn't complaining.

Letting his fingernail drag down the skin of her neck, Klaus watched her curiously. "You don't seem like the type to have seen much suffering, love." He dug his nail in deeper, bringing her blood to the surface. When he expected to feel hunger at the scent on her skin, however, he frowned at the utter lack of desire to rip open the pulsing vein. Even after a thousand years, Klaus had never felt such apathy at the sight of human blood.

 _Human_ blood.

"What are you?" he hissed, pushing her up against the wall. Mikael-induced paranoia aside, it was the unknown threat that kept Klaus ever vigilant to his status in the supernatural world. He always knew the enemy he was up against, and he didn't like that Katerina had managed to find a weapon he never knew existed. Shoving the girl back harder, he yelled it in her face. "What are you?!"

His fingers pressed into her flesh, only to feel her shoulders expand with sharp spines biting into his hands. He let go immediately to jump back, and he watched in confusion as her skin slowly receded back to her bare shoulders. For a moment, he would have sworn her shoulders had puffed like a blowfish. "What are you?" he repeated more softly.

Standing straight, she walked toward him proudly to poke a sharp talon in his chest - literally, a bird's talon right where her index finger should be. "I'm not a what, I'm a who," she snapped. "My name is Caroline Forbes, and you don't scare me."

"But Katerina must if you do her bidding," he countered.

Caroline rolled her eyes and gestured for him to open the door to his hotel room. "Are you going to let me in, or what?"

"Why are you here? I don't negotiate with the help."

"I hear you don't negotiate at all," she pointed out humorlessly. "Look, you killed my friend. I think that buys me a frank conversation about what the hell you're doing on my campus and chasing after the one person left in the world who cares about me."

Just curious enough not to kill her outright, Klaus nodded as he swiped the key card to his door and led her inside. "Katerina Petrova cares for no one but herself."

"Katherine Pierce saved me," Caroline answered hotly. "Hate her all you want, but I don't want to see her dead for some shit that happened five hundred years ago. God, get a grip."

Anger flared within Klaus, and he clenched his fists in rage. "For the last time," he gritted out, "what are you, and why are you here?"

Curious or not, his patience had its limits.

Caroline scoffed as she made herself comfortable on the couch. "You're like a billion years old, right? Surely, you've heard of mutants from time to time."

"I have," Klaus nodded in realization. "But as witches and werewolves pass down their genetic traits to manifest in predictable ways, mutants seem to defy logic and reason of current science."

With an almost imperceptible shudder, Caroline met his eyes with hers blazing. "Yep, we're all just freaks for people to write off or use for science. Geez, no wonder Kat hates you."

"Someone's projecting," Klaus commented, shrewdly noting her aversion to the scientific aspect of her situation. "I assume Katerina rescued you from some dreadful experimentation."

Caroline hardened, her skin almost turning into stone as he watched. "I'm what they call a 'survivor,' practically immortal because my cells can somehow mimic animal adaptations. My father trained me to use this power at will, since I was a young child who scared the local swimming hole by staying underwater for too long. Instead of drowning like they feared, I just grew gills. I thought Dad was teaching me to protect myself from a world that would only love me if I could fit in."

Though he didn't want to, Klaus felt an odd kinship with the young woman lost in her memories.

"But he didn't want to protect me, he just wanted me to be strong enough." Klaus could hear her teeth grinding. "I needed to be strong enough to withstand the real work performed by the Augustine Society. He was a founding member of this 'scientific research group' meant to extort genetic abnormalities for whatever findings could improve life for the 'normal' people, only to find out he had a mutant freak for a daughter himself. All my life, and he just wanted me as a test subject."

Klaus knew what it meant to be held against his will, even by his own mind when the hunter's curse had taken hold of him. "Were you alone?" He didn't like the thought of that.

"Not even in my abilities." Caroline chuckled, though it sounded sad. "Armando Munoz," she said reverently. "He was my friend. He tried to save me, and they annihilated every cell in his body just to prove that they could. Even at absolute zero, our bodies were able to survive like we were in a deep hibernation. The last time they put him in the freezer, they tested his ability to adapt without molecular movement. He couldn't."

Standing, Caroline began to pace the room and Klaus tracked her movements carefully. "I was going to be next, but Kat swooped in killed them all in a blink. I didn't even know vampires existed, let alone all the cool tricks you get."

"Some would call your abilities 'cool tricks,'" Klaus said, considering what she had shared. "Absolute zero. It's not very sporting to tell me how to kill you."

"They did it in the name of bettering the human condition, despite the inhuman depravity their science required," Caroline spat. "Even you're not that cruel."

With a dark smile, Klaus stood to crowd her space, though she didn't cower to him. He liked that. "You'd be surprised, love. I did kill your friend, after all."

"In a mostly painless way," she countered. "You still had shit reasons to do it, but you don't pretend you're anything less than the evil you are. The Augustine Society thought they were the good guys."

Klaus leaned forward, mere inches from her face as he regarded her cool expression. "If your enemy is already dead, then why are you here fighting Katerina's battle? Surely, you've earned a bit of rest. Travel, perhaps? Rome or Paris; Tokyo is nice this time of year."

Scoffing, Caroline pushed away from him. "My bag is already packed," she admitted. Klaus frowned as her legs seemed to disappear into the decorations of his room. "I'm not here to fight you, Klaus. I just had to keep you occupied long enough for Kat to leave the country. Did you know the cuttlefish can blend almost perfectly with its surroundings in the ocean, the camouflage is unmatched in the animal kingdom."

He gripped her arms, even as they too disappeared within his firm hold. Klaus could feel her flesh and the pumping of her blood, but even his vampiric senses could barely see her. "Do you really think I'll just let you go?"

"Do you really think you have a choice?" she challenged before a second set of arms suddenly appeared from behind her still visible torso and snapped his neck.

When Klaus awoke, he found himself utterly alone and thirsting for something even greater than his vengeance against Katerina.

He wanted Caroline Forbes and the challenge she presented.


End file.
